Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

By the way, Sulla. Are you sure you want to commit so many archers to move all the way west? I could easily have two archers there and maybe 1-2 horsemen. I doubt I really need such a heavy support. Keeping in mind that we have a new 'foe' in the west, it might be wiser to keep your troops there just in case.

[Sullla]

OK wow, what a busy turn. Let me try to run through a whole bunch of the topics that came up for discussion.

* For Seoul: were you still planning on investing the envoy that China picked up this turn via Theology research into the city state? Even if we conquer it down the road in 25 turns, it's still probably worth getting the extra 2 beakers/turn for the moment.

* It doesn't seem worthwhile at the moment to keep holding back Chinese techs/civics for the purpose of district discounting. We'll just need to build some of them for China to get the total number of districts up, and then the discounting will take care of itself from there. (Much like what Rome is doing right now.) For Hangzhou, the first question is whether to build a Theatre or a Commercial hub as the size 7 district choice. Hangzhou grows fast enough that I don't think this is a huge issue... I think the answer to this question is how soon we see ourselves building the Oracle. The Theatre district isn't particularly great until we can get the Oracle in place to boost its cultural output and its Great Writer/Artist/Musician output. That's more likely to be around size 10 than size 7 since we have so many other things to build in Hangzhou. Of course, we can't place the Commercial district just yet because it's outside the city's cultural borders and we need to keep saving gold for the moment. Hmmm.

I think I still lean towards the Commercial district at size 7 and the Theatre district at size 10. With Church Property income, we're going to keep escalating our gold/turn reserves and we should be able to purchase the tile needed soon enough. You know, we can also consider putting a Commercial district on the plains tile southwest of the city center, although that would rule out Apanda as a wonder. Do you remember if we had that particular tile saved for anything special (?)

* I'm fine with going builder -> builder (for Ilkum chopping overflow purposes) -> temple -> Mahabodi at Hangzhou. Enhancing our religion with the two beliefs that we want (Wats and Crusade) is more important than getting a Campus district up and running for 1 beaker/turn, especially if we're not making use of the district discounting formula at the moment.

* So as far as wonder prioritization goes, the big three that we want right now are the Mahabodi, Jebel Barkal, and the Colosseum. The Mahabodi is likely to come first since we have the tech and we're only awaiting the construction of the temple itself. The Colosseum is actually the best of the three wonders and incredibly important for us to control; fortunately there's no competition for it and we should land it easily. The Colosseum is so good that it's actually banned on the MP ladder as being overpowered: 2 culture/turn and 3 amenities for every city within six tile range is amazing. All of the Chinese cities would go Ecstatic immediately, and then Singaboy could send all his luxuries over to Rome to make those cities Ecstatic as well. We're placing the wonder two tiles east of the city #4 spot where it just barely reaches Shangdu. The tricky thing is the requirement for an Entertainment district, but there are so many jungle and forest tiles in that area that we might just have a builder start cutting them down left and right (without fancy production modifiers in place) to get the Entertainment district finished quickly. So perhaps one builder needed for chopping and a second builder needed to supply the charges for the wonder itself? Normally that would be a wasted investment but we have the forests/jungles to burn down there, and having the Colosseum up and running a dozen turns sooner would be worth it.

Jebel Barkal is very good as well (I think it would be worth about 20 faith/turn immediately all on its own), it just has third priority because there's no competition for it and we already have a lot of faith coming in. The original plan was the desert hill southeast of Stonehenge, however there's an iron resource on that tile and therefore we won't be able to construct a wonder there. So we'll have to harvest one of the two copper resources at Quangzhou and then construct Jebel Barkal there. The northern copper is the better spot because it can reach Antananarivo, plus it's already in our borders. We'll get around to this in a little bit.

Petra can come after those three wonders because all of them are more important. That will also give China time to build the three different types of districts for the Mathematics boost. I don't think any other team is going to try building Petra (or any Ancient/Classical wonder) given what we've been doing thus far and the risk of losing all their production to Chinese builder charges.

* The biggest news from the turn: we have contact with England, or will on my turn. (The contact rules in Civ6 are bizarre - spotting a unit from another civ DOESN'T give you contact half the time, what the heck?) This looks like confirmation that Singaboy's hunch is correct: there are landbridges between the starting continents. Good call there. Looks like England/Nubia are to our east, likely in the northeast corner of the map just as we are in the northwest corner. I never like it when another team is finding my civ instead of vice versa but them's the breaks right now. We need to get more scouting information for sure.

Diplomatically, do we want to sign a Declaration of Friendship with their team? I would be happy with that move since I don't think we have any plans to attack them in the immediate future. I would also be perfectly fine with declining though: you can make a good case that they have more to gain from a non-aggression treaty right now than we do. On the other hand, their team is #1 in military power at the moment so it's not the worst idea to lock in peace for a little while. Interested in your thoughts on this Singaboy. One thing we are *NOT* doing is signing Open Borders. No way are we letting their scout poke around inside our territory with no chance to do the same to them.

I suppose we could also try to surround the scout with Roman units and kill it, but that would make an enemy for sure and I'm not convinced that it's worth the diplomatic enmity just to get rid of a scout. What do you think?

* Domestically, the scaling up of districts doesn't really matter too much if you're using chopping to complete them since the chops scale up at exactly the same rate. Obviously the districts get more expensive for non-chopping purposes with more techs and civics. One other thing I'll point out is the fact that the scaling cost is based on the greater of (techs completed / 67) or (civics completed / 50). In the early game, that's nearly always the number of civics completed - finishing techs often has no effect. You might want to double check on whether or not leaving techs uncompleted is actually doing anything before contorting China into knots to avoid finishing research. I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me right now to tell you which is the case for China.

* The Legacy bonuses for governments are pointless right now in Civ6. :rolleyes: Too small to have any effect. It's such a wasted opportunity for what was a great idea in theory. I hope the expansions consider beefing them up and making them worth thinking about.

* The speed at which Shangdu has been growing with the sugar resource and and the Hanging Gardens + amenities bonus is amazing. All the way to size 3 in what, six total turns? Awesome. It might be worth staying on high food tiles and racing to size 4, or alternately giving up a point of food surplus to work the 1/3 plains hill tile for the extra production. Actually, nevermind the first suggestion: with Ilkum in place, it's definitely better to work the 1/3 plains hill tile at size 3 and get the builder done faster. Looking good there regardless.

* Missionary movement path looks good to me, those are the three cities to convert and in the order you suggested. Shangdu should convert next turn for an immediate +2 gold income. Then the Roman missionary comes out in a few more turns, great stuff.

* Hmmm, how many units do we think we need to capture Antananarivo? We don't want to fool around there, since one of the worst things that can happen is to send too few units to attack a city state and come up short. We'll have the two Chinese slingers upgraded into archers, the horseman, and maybe the injured Chinese warrior currently up in the Arctic. That's pretty good but another unit or two to be safe would be nice. How about I send two archers your way, keeping the other two archers around the Roman cities for defense? 4 archers + horseman + warrior should be plenty. I don't want to send fewer than that though, in case the Cultural city state starts pumping out its own archers or gets city walls done or whatever. Obviously if we can convert the city and get Crusade belief in place this will all be a moot point. (It would be a great test run for using that belief against other players though.)

Side food for thought: assuming we can get Crusade belief, in about 20 turns or so we should try to line up a missionary to Seoul with a small army of Roman legions to escort it. That would make for a VERY easy capture of that spot. I'll have at least three warriors for upgrading and probably more, just need to get the money in place (and perhaps Professional Army policy to make the upgrades half cost?) and research to Iron Working tech. This is going to be my tentative plan for the Turn 75-80 range.

A lot to consider there. As I said, interested in your thoughts on all these topics.

[Singaboy]

Ok, great post Sulla with plenty of food for thought.

I am fine with waiting for the CH. It might be an idea to plant it SW at the river. I need to check what was the plan there. * I checked and the initial location is west of the river due to adjacency with the CH from Shangdu. I think we can forgo that and build it SW of river once currency comes in (3 turns via Rome)

Yes, the entertainment district needs to be chopped out for sure before Colosseum, so another builder is needed, I forgot about that. However, the benefits are just too good to pass this wonder.

The siege of Antananarivo should be done with 1 horseman, 1 warrior and 4 archers. I think that's in fact an overkill. A horseman is pretty good for such a low defense city. I think capturing Seoul with the aid of a missionary would be great play and a good test bed for future actions. I would have invested an envoy into Seoul unless the quest would be very easy to fulfill. 2 science a turn aren't that bad for 20 turns. I surely need more science.
* Edit: Would Roman units gain that +10 bonus? Wouldn't crusade only apply to China? Or would Rome fall under this once the Roman cities are converted?

Now for England. I don't want them to discover Lisbon. Can we keep them away from it? I am fine with DoF but definitely no Open Borders. They don't need to know the map in our core. What we need to do is to start exploring. Hence, I will send a second horseman down southwest. With Antananarivo, I would be able to build galleys.

*Additional idea: Currently Rome has 5 cities. How about using the next missionary to convert Milano/Ostia and Venezia and then send it to explore. It moves 4 tiles a turn and should ignore other units unless at war. The third missionary could then covert the remaining three Roman cities.

[Modo]

With the movement rules in this game you could use two units as a sort of sliding wall to frustrate the English scouting efforts.

[Sullla]

Let's see... our previous city planning at Hangzhou didn't have anything slotted on that tile southwest of the city center:



Hangzhou's Commercial district certainly doesn't need to go across the river to the northeast. I think we're good to place it on that tile southwest of the city, perhaps even right away when Currency is discovered to lock in the cost. As for attacking Antananarivo, the one thing that I want us to be careful about is not comparing the forces that we'll have in 10 turns to the units that the city has right now. The city state will also have more units in 10 turns, and we should plan for that accordingly. It's easy to undershoot the mark and bring too few forces to bear, causing delays and setting us back. I'll defer to your judgment here but I still think it's better to send 2 Roman archers over to help assist just to be safe.

On Crusade: I'm not sure if the +10 strength bonus will apply to Rome as well as China. I know that Follower beliefs absolutely apply to anyone who has the religion present; I was able to use Jesuit Education in a Single Player game in one random city that the AI had converted even though that religion wasn't present anywhere else in my territory. Crusade is an Enhancer belief though and I don't know if the rules are different there. We'll have to test this: when three of my five cities adopt our religion, my overall civ will convert and then all I need to do is have one unit in Chinese territory to see if the bonus appears. For the moment we should assume that Crusade does not apply to Rome while hoping to be pleasantly surprised. (If any lurkers know the answer to this, feel free to let us know.)

I think the next missionary should use all three charges on Roman cities because 3/5 cities converted will convert my entire civ, and that may affect whether things like Crusade apply to Rome. We'll have plenty of faith to get more missionaries out afterwards, plus Chinese horses and Roman galleys to start pushing back more of the fog. I do like the idea to send a one-charge missionary off to do some exploring.

Modo: scouts have three movement points so it would have to be a LOT of sliding units to trap movement. Not completely impossible but certainly impractical right now. Let's look at the turn.



Both Woden and Chevalier Mal Fet play between Singaboy and myself so that English scout hasn't had a chance to move yet. More on their civs in a minute after getting through my civ's actions. The biggest thing this turn was another Agoge forest chop into the Campus district at Ostia. Swap back to the warrior at 39/40 production, the chop was worth 47 base / 70 modified production, and the resulting overflow took the Campus district from 16/107 production up to 86/107 production. Instead of 11 more turns to complete now it takes 3 more turns to complete, and the double Campus pair should be worth +3 science when this one finishes. Getting a bunch of Campuses finished will also help a lot with district discounting later on - this will be my "primary" district that helps get the 40% cheaper price on the rest.

With that forest chop finished, I could now drop Agoge:



Maritime Industries slotted in for galley training along with Ilkum for more of the endless builders. Here's an updated overview of my territory with those policy cards in place:



Roma's builder ETA drops to 3 more turns and has a healthy amount of overflow into the following production item, another builder. Roma is getting 15 base / 19.5 modified production right now while also growing at a healthy rate towards size 6. Venezia needs 4 turns to build a galley, falling a little bit short of enough production to train the ship in 3 turns. It's getting 9 base / 18 modified production and galleys cost 65 production. So figure 3.5 turns of production needed and two galleys done over the next 7 turns. Milano is just getting started while slowly working on a builder for itself. I need to sit down and think about where to use these builder charges on the units coming out of Roma; probably four farms on the wheat/rice resources down in the south because I need 6 total farms for the upcoming Feudalism and then at least one forest chop somewhere for a district. I'm getting prepared for some Limes + city wall district chops in the upcoming turns when Defensive Tactics gets discovered.

Two turns to Currency, two turns to mine the iron tile at Roma, three turns to Wheel tech. Civics research is starting the long undiscounted slog to Defensive Tactics, then some combination of Feudalism, Military Training, and Mercenaries since I want to get Professional Army online for legion/crossbow upgrades ASAP. It should take about 20-25 turns to get there by my current estimate. I even picked up the Mercenaries boost this turn for having 8 total units, plus the Theology boost came over from Singaboy.



Firenze hit size 3 and gets to work three awesome tiles at once. Campus is already down to 10 turns remaining and will get me one step closer to being able to make use of the discounting formula for districts when it finishes. Note that the city decided to pick the iron tile for its next culture expansion - thank goodness. It's still likely going to grab the natural wonder tile next, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will take that awesome 2/1/2/2 grassland hill tile soon. At 5 culture/turn it is claiming additional tiles really fast.

So let's talk about our new friends in Nubia and England:



Well here's all you need to know: military power of 186 for England and 175 for Nubia. I also had the chance to spot the district Nubia built last turn: a second Encampment. They have two Encampments for Nubia and zero other districts of any kind, none at all completed for England. Their strategy is obvious: early game rush with a Great General and Nubia's overpowered archer unique unit. Fortunately we can see this attack coming well in advance and hopefully will be prepared to defend ourselves if needed. I'm hopefully that we are not the target, in part because we are the last civ for them to contact:



Note that their team has already met everyone else. England has a Declaration of Friendship with someone in the fog, but interesting Nubia doesn't have a DoF with anyone else. I have no idea what that means... Anyway, the fact that we're the last ones for them to meet is probably good news. Teams start making plans when they meet other teams, and if they're thinking about a rush, their planning is more likely to have been geared towards someone that they met as opposed to an unknown team in the fog. There's also the random city razing that happened to Cornflakes a little while back. Was that this team hitting one of their cities (?) Impossible to tell, but something happened to make Khmer lose a city.

This team is clearly ahead of us militarily right now. However, they are losing badly in every other category. We have scores of 91 points (Singaboy) and 74 points (Rome) to their 54 points (England) and 53 points (Nubia). We make 14 beakers/turn (Rome) and 12 beakers (China) to their 13 beakers/turn (Nubia) and 9 beakers/turn (England). Note that Nubia has an envoy invested at Seoul so the civ itself only gets 11 beakers/turn. Culture is even more lopsided, with 10 culture/turn for China and a disgusting 23 culture/turn for Rome against 7 culture/turn for each of them. Their gold generation is also terrible, with 52 / 39 gold in their treasuries and 8 gold/turn for England against 3 gold/turn (!) for Nubia. They're not going to have much gold to spare for upgrades, and hopefully that means wastefully building their units from scratch. Interestingly, they are getting 3 faith/turn for Nubia and 2 faith/turn for England. This means that they have a Religious city state on their continent and both of them have an envoy, with Nubia getting another +1 faith/turn from Autocracy government. I should have checked to see their pantheons, have to do that next turn.

So we are beating them handily everywhere except in military power. Singaboy, I think we should have Rome offer England a Declaration of Friendship. If Chevalier Mal Fet accepts, then we get 30 turns to extend our lead and we know they aren't their primary target. If they reject the offer, that gives us further information and we need to be prepared for an attack. I will be getting city walls up everywhere (for Limes overflow but it works for defense too) and pushing for Professional Army for cheap upgrades. I'd also like to take both Iron Working (legions) and Machinery (crossbows) to 1 turn away from completion and be prepared to finish them and then upgrade units if needed. I'll get galleys in the water and warriors on the approach paths from the east to spot any forces on their way ahead of time. We should have time to deploy legions and crossbows before an army from their team can arrive, and that would likely be enough to stop Pitati archers. Again, I don't *THINK* we are their primary target or that a big army is about to start racing towards us from the east, but we can't afford to get caught off guard.

Oh, and there's little we can do to stop them from contacting Lisbon. That scout will definitely move north (since it won't be able to move through my territory) and will run into the city state's units. If we declare war to kill it, they will still get contact via Lisbon also declaring war from China's suzerainship. Since we're in the superior longterm position, I suggest trying to get a Declaration of Friendship via diplomacy first, and then killing the scout only as a backup resort if it's clear they have hostile intent. Interested in your thoughts on this situation.

[Singaboy]

It will be interesting to see where the scout moved. It could potentially pillage your campus. I am surely glad that Rome acts as a buffer in this case as China's military strength is currently non existent.

I hold back on other comments until I see the save myself later today

[Singaboy]

Turn 54:

I open the save to see that England's scout has moved north along Rome's borders. They will meet the city state next turn for sure. Shangdu and Hangzhou have both grown a new citizen. Research and culture is up a little bit, though Hangzhou no longer enjoys a happiness bonus at the moment. I switch back to bronze working as I will get Military Tradition anyway , so tech and civics are on par with regards to how many I have researched. For civics, I will start to follow Rome's footsteps as I don't think I can get Inspirations fast enough.

I start a round of micromanaging the cities ensuring that everything is optimized. While starting with Quanzhou, I spot the southwestern slinger chased by the barbarian spear. Well, it is not going to catch my slinger. let's have a look at Quanzhou. The horseman is at 14/80 and will be at 23/80 next turn. With Maneuver in place from then onward, the first horseman will be ready by T59. Not the fastest really but nothing much I can do about it. I plan to produce another horseman there which will take another 6 turns.

Shangdu is now at pop 3 and thanks to Ilkum, I am swapping to high production tiles until the first builder is done. This stalls growth, but need a number of builders fast. The city is now making 10.9 hammers a turn. With 20 hammers invested, it will take 7 turns to reach 78 hammers.

Hangzhou likewise need very close monitoring as I want to time the second builder to be almost ready when the forest hill gets chopped. I can used the sugar tile a 2f1h tile to balance production. The first builder will be done in 3 turns with a big overflow of at least 15 hammers. The builder will then need three turns to improve the sugar tile and climb the hill. These three turns will be used to get as close as possible to 74 hammers. Hence, I will need to calculate as accurate as possible to get to 73 hammers in 6 turns. In between, I might have to switch to the temple for a turn to time the chop with the completion of the builder. Currently, a chop is 50 hammers, which would result in 65 hammers toward the temple, slightly more than half of its production.

The option then is to produce yet another builder and time the next chop of the rain forest to complete the temple or chop into a district.

We will produce 4 builders in total:

1st - improve sugar and chop forests/jungle for temple

2nd - build Mahabodi

3rd - chop jungle/forests around 4th city into an entertainment district

4th - build Colosseum

The whole exercise will require close attention and micromanaging. Ideally, the four builders are done before swapping Ilkum for Corvee.

The last action of this micro-action turn is to convert Shangdu to the true religion of Marco Polo. Income increases to 19.1gpt. The missionary will only need 3 turns to reach and convert Antananarivo thanks to movement 4. The final religious charge follows another 3 turns after that. With the sugar tile improved as well, China will make 25gpt in 6 turns.

As far as England and Nubia is concerned, DoF seems to be the best idea currently. We will need to be on our toes though as England could potentially develop a powerful navy. It is telling that England came to us via a scout and not a galley. There might not be any sea access. High time for us to do proper exploration.

[Sullla]

Looking good right now. I agree that it's better to hold Shandgu at size 3 for the moment and get out the builder faster. (Did you trade the sugar tile back to Hangzhou after dropping it at Shangdu? One of the two cities should always be working that 5 food tile.) We should try to plan out where the Chinese builders are going to be using their charges. I saw your list in the post:

1st - improve sugar and chop forests/jungle for temple
2nd - build Mahabodi
3rd - chop jungle/forests around 4th city into an entertainment district
4th - build Colosseum

But we can try to be more precise there; I'll throw out some possible ideas here. (Also where is the fourth builder coming from? Currently we have plans for three of them.)

First builder, out of Hangzhou in three turns. Let's see, we should improve the sugar tile (1) so that it can be sent over to Rome for another amenity, plus the 2 gold/turn income from the plantation is always helpful. We need two more charges (3) to chop and then mine the riverside plains hill tile to the east of the sugar resource. Don't forget to micromange the chop overflow via Ilkum to get the maximum benefit into the city's temple. For the last two charges, how about we harvest the wheat resource southwest of Shandu (4), since that will get the city up to size 4 without even needing to worry about working high food tiles, and then mine the salt resource (5) which will be within the city's borders by then. The salt resource gives China another amenity and Shandgu another good tile to work for its yield value.

The second builder out of Hangzhou uses its five charges for the Mahabodi. (As a side note, the wonder will be worth 8 faith/turn for China and the temple that precedes it is worth another 4 faith/turn. It might be worth saving up for a faith-purchased Wat in Hangzhou next after the initial two missionaries. China has enough faith that all Wats should be faith-purchased, never built naturally.)

The third builder out of Shangdu is planned for chopping the Entertainment district in city #4. I think these charges get used as follows: pasture the horses southwest of the city center (1) since it's too good of a tile to pass up, chop the jungle east of the city (2) on the tile where the Entertainment district itself is going to avoid wasting the free food/production, chop/mine the 2/2 grassland jungle tile two north of the city (4) because that's a tile that can be shared between city #4 and Quangzhou, and then chop the tile where the Colosseum is going itself two tiles east of the city (5). Between two forest chops and a jungle clearing, that should get us plenty of production to knock out a district even without any production modifiers in place, although if by some chance we can set up a chop overflow via Agoge or Limes or whatever, that would be even better. We will need to have a modest amount of gold on hand to purchase the forest tiles 2 north and 2 east of city #4, but we have plenty of time to save that up and China's income is starting to explode.

The fourth builder for the Colosseum itself will need to come from somewhere. Probably out of Hangzhou after the temple is done. China might be running Ilkum + Corvee policies for a little while.

Last random asides:

* England's scout actually gets blocked by the combined Rome + China culture in the north. The western half of our continent is off limits.

* Weren't you going to place an envoy in Seoul this turn? And place the Commercial district at Hangzhou southwest of the city? It's fine if you have other plans, just a small reminder.

[Singaboy]

Seems Archduke is not going to play his turn so fast as he is traveling to England. Time for good planning. Maybe I wasn't too clear in my post but I thought, I addressed most of the concerns you posted. Let's see:

Connecting the sugar will provide this luxury for Rome, that's correct. Actually Rome could connect both spices and pearls for +3 amenities too and send spices to China or wait for that trade to expire.

Yes, the plan was to produce the fourth builder using a chop of the jungle tile west of the city (instead of harvesting wheat and mining salt). However, I think using the last two charges of that first builder to harvest the wheat (and immediately lock the Holy Site) and mining the salt for Shangdu are pretty solid choices too. In fact, better.

Currently Hangzhou is working the sugar tile. It is far better than a 2f1h tile of course. I am trying to optimize the overflow from the forest chop which goes into finishing the 2nd builder and temple.

I have no contact with Seoul. Since I did not have any unit around Venezia, it might not happen for a while. I have no contact with England either currently.

I am more than happy to lock the commercial district in Hangzhou as soon as possible but I am waiting for Rome to finish the technology so I get the Eureka for it. Remember, I don't have a trader yet and not Eureka. I have researched the tech to roughly 40%. In 2 turns Rome will be done with currency (I hope) and then I immediately lock the district in the location we discussed.

One more thing, I think Rome should continue to send over 2 archers for the siege of Antananarivo.

[Sullla]

Ah, sorry about that Singaboy. I didn't realize that you lacked contact with Seoul, and I totally forgot that we both still lacked Currency tech for Commercial districts. That last one was genuine weed on my part. As far as connecting spices and pearls, I only have 1 builder charge remaining and I'm hoping to hold it to mine the really nice 2/1/2/2 grassland hill at Venezia. I'm less concerned about amenities because we have the Colosseum completing on the horizon in about 15 turns and that should solve our issues there for a very long time.

I will keep sending 2 archers over towards Antananarivo while keeping the other 2 (and 4 warriors) over in the east to explore and watch for any potential incoming enemy units. Based on the size of the map I think that England/Nubia are roughly 25-30 tiles away to the east from us. That's not impossibly far away, but it will make an attack hard to pull off anytime soon. We should be able to get spotter units in place to give fair warning if anything nefarious is planned.